The firm is called Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD). It's based in Guizhou Province and supervised by a board ran by government-owned businesses. In emails to mainland Chinese customers, Apple says that the move enables "us to continue improving the speed and reliability of iCloud and to comply with Chinese regulations."

But there's also the chance that closer ties with the Chinese government might mean more regulation, which Apple has a record of abiding closely to in the past. Last July, Apple deleted VPN apps from the App Store that had helped netizens evade Chinese censorship, "because it includes content that is illegal in China." Those who aren't happy with the move at least have the option of closing their iCloud accounts.

Read into it what you will, but the ties between Apple and the Chinese government are strengthening. One has to wonder how long until Apple has to open up iMessage's encryption.

> In China the government controls corporations. In America corporations control the government.
Sound interesting.
Not so long ago, someone wrote that http://www.banderasnews.com/0908... "In America, Corporations do not Control the Government. In America, Corporations are the Government."

> Oops, I mean:
Not so long ago, someone wrote that "In America, Corporations do not Control the Government. In America, Corporations are the Government". http://www.banderasnews.com/0908...

Very true. I also criticized obama & dems for not standing up to corporate & wallstreet abuse. It was a real slap in the face when those who lost their homes and paid taxes ended up having to subsidizing wallstreet by explicitly buying the toxic debt they accumulated by gambling and loosing money in our bank accounts. Once relieved of all bad debt through taxpayer funding, wallstreet balance sheets skyrocketed and they went on to make record profits, CEOs taking huge undeserved bonuses. Middle class families on the other hand are still recovering from wallstreet's economic damages.

Yet the corporate corruption has gone from bad to significantly worse under trump cronyism where many prominent advisory positions are sourced from the very same wallstreet firms that crashed our world economy. It's a slap in the face all over again. Wealthy wallstreet interests are better represented in this whitehouse administration that at any other point in history. Data, facts and qualifications don't matter and the lower & middle classes be damned.

Replying the earlier comment about US and China Government. One must understand, US is ruled by laws and its constitution. That is what the country was founded upon. And every Judges and people agree with the basic right and principle.

China is also ruled by laws and its constitution, except those law and constitution are not set in stone and changes its meaning or existence solely depends on parties interpretation of it. ( Or you can argue this isn't really law at all, but that is another topic )

So in US, if the government tell you to do something, and you think it is against the law, you have a way to solve this dispute, you go to court. In China..... my suggestions is dont try it.

China recently has a new law that require ALL Cloud's data to be held by a local ( Chinese ) Companies for National Security reason. Not even a JV will do. So Apple can no longer held their own DC in China. However the law doesn't require foreign companies to use whatever software these Chinese companies provides. I.e The whole iCloud System software is still in Apple's hand.

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It is for this reason I really wish Apple could just give me Time Capsule for iOS. While I trust Apple to act in the best interest of its Customer, sometimes you can only do so much. Why not just work out a new Time Capsule. Who wants to have their Data held as hostage in the cloud?

> It is for this reason I really wish Apple could just give me Time Capsule for iOS. While I trust Apple to act in the best interest of its Customer, sometimes you can only do so much. Why not just work out a new Time Capsule. Who wants to have their Data held as hostage in the cloud?

This! Consumers have been steered to 3rd party data silos, and consequently we're losing control over our data. It didn't have to be this way though. Consumers needs could be better served with federated protocols that allow us to choose where our data is held. But companies like microsoft, apple, google, have all been involved in pushing proprietary solutions instead. Given their privileged access inside the operating systems, it can actually be quite difficult to implement DIY alternatives. The days of being in control of our own computers are dying, and while people here are likely to understand the harms of this, the public at large is naive and hasn't spoken up, which bodes poorly for even more future lock-in.

>
Very true. I also criticized obama &amp; dems for not standing up to corporate &amp; wallstreet abuse. It was a real slap in the face when those who lost their homes and paid taxes ended up having to subsidizing wallstreet by explicitly buying the toxic debt they accumulated by gambling and loosing money in our bank accounts. Once relieved of all bad debt through taxpayer funding, wallstreet balance sheets skyrocketed and they went on to make record profits, CEOs taking huge undeserved bonuses. Middle class families on the other hand are still recovering from wallstreet's economic damages.

Yet the corporate corruption has gone from bad to significantly worse under trump cronyism where many prominent advisory positions are sourced from the very same wallstreet firms that crashed our world economy. It's a slap in the face all over again. Wealthy wallstreet interests are better represented in this whitehouse administration that at any other point in history. Data, facts and qualifications don't matter and the lower &amp; middle classes be damned.

Although I agree broadly with your sentiments I think you are wrong when you say "by gambling and loosing money in our bank accounts". It is a common myth that banks take in deposits and then lend them out. Banks don't lend out the money from depositors accounts, they create the money they lend out of thin air, in fact banks are the primary source of money creation in modern economies, over 90% of money is created inside private credit institutions. The total amount of money (and debt) created by the banks hugely exceeds the scale of deposits that the bank hold. In order to understand how they do that it is probably simplest to view this short video of an interview with Professor Richard Werner a leading expert on the financial system.

Werner wrote a very good book on this topic entitled "Where Does Money Come From", you can find it on Amazon.

Once it is understood that banks create money out of thin air and then lend it, it becomes easier to understand how and why a vast mountain of debt has been created that far exceeds the size (and is growing faster than) the real economy.

Tony Swash, > Although I agree broadly with your sentiments I think you are wrong when you say "by gambling and loosing money in our bank accounts" > Once it is understood that banks create money out of thin air and then lend it, it becomes easier to understand how and why a vast mountain of debt has been created that far exceeds the size (and is growing faster than) the real economy.

I do understand how modern banks are loaning money that didn't exist prior. Creating money is yet another basic monetary function we've handed to corporations. For now, suffice it to say that the amount of money a bank is allowed to create is based on leveraging the value of it's assets/deposits.

One lining here is that most consumer savings/credit accounts are FDIC insured up to a point, outside of this though there are no guaranties the bank will return the principal deposited in accounts. You could blame consumers for having risk based accounts, and maybe you can even blame employees for participating in employer sponsored 401k retirement accounts, but I think the reality is that many of these people really were not aware the extent to which "reputable" banks were gambling with their money.

Many argue it was necessary for the government to come in and save the banks to save all the depositors who were put at risk, but absolutely was not necessary for the government to come in, pay the bank's gambling bill, and then allow the banks to keep all the profits and bonuses. Those executives should have been out of a job! And now they're running the federal government from within.

The message is that firms that are "too big to fail", can reap huge rewards regardless of their performance. If they fail, taxpayers will bail them out, if they win, then more profits...it's literally a win-win for these executives. In the meantime though the trillion dollar bailout packages could have gone to health care, education, infrastructure, medical research, etc...everything is suffering because we've wasted tax dollars on corporate welfare.

> Replying the earlier comment about US and China Government. One must understand, US is ruled by laws and its constitution. That is what the country was founded upon. And every Judges and people agree with the basic right and principle.

Actually the US government is currently wiping it's ass with your constitution. But Americans do not care because they do not want to be free anymore. Being free is hard work and it is easier to just let Uncle Sam wipe his ass with your constitution and hope he will take good care of you in return.

Unfortunately there is a strong positive correlation between an entity who would wipe their ass with your human rights and that entity not caring about your best interest.